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Wednesday, December 6, 2017

November Month in Review - Local News

The naming of Collier Schools Superintendent Kamela Patton as Superintendent of the Year by the Florida Consortium of Education Foundations topped the list of local news for November!

Patton was honored for her dedication to Future Ready Collier, an association of more than 50 organizations that try to help prepare children for kindergarten and high school students for college and careers.

So in this post, I’ll lead with news about our Collier County Public Schools, followed by news of our Collier County and Naples City government. Each of these bodies is overseen by people we elect, so awareness of the issues and decisions being made is important to be informed voters.

Top stories - County government
As we’ve been reading about in prior Months-in-Review, the Board of County Commissioners has several decisions to make in the coming months regarding how to manage the county’s growth, redevelopment, and aging infrastructure, as well as how to pay for it all.

Clogged Immokalee Road makes a parallel Vanderbilt Beach Road extension sensible; that’s $90 million as a start. Nearly a dozen bridges built circa 1960 are crumbling. The taxpayer-supported county jail is the No. 1 mental health holding center. Tens of millions of dollars for promised parks east of Naples don’t have a funding source. Medical device manufacturer Arthrex chose South Carolina for a 1,000-job expansion; it didn’t have an adequate, trained workforce here. Housing is too expensive for young professionals.

All that was true before Irma highlighted inadequacies of our sewage lift stations and drainage.

Our elected officials are also responsible for ensuring that the Hurricane Irma cleanup is completed as quickly as possible, that what should be done differently next time is identified, and that new procedures are put in place. In November’s news:

What a month! The number of challenging issues our elected county officials are dealing with on our behalf is almost overwhelming. November’s news provides good examples of the role of county government in our lives, and the importance of letting our voices be heard on decisions being made.Meanwhile, in Naples City government …